Writing on the wall

November 15, 2012

Walls are vital public spaces. Paint some graffiti or put up a bunch of posters in the middle of the night on a Sunday, so when everyone goes to work on Monday morning the city is papered over with your messages.

In 2009, I was a member of an activist group called the “Dosta” movement. (Dosta means “enough” in Bosnian.) Our first actions were taken to protest the fact that the city council had refused for 4 months to approve a mayor for the city of Mostar— meaning no city budget, no salaries for city employees, no public services. (In the end, Mostar was without a mayor for over a year.)

We had great fun sneaking around in the middle of the night, putting up posters. They were a hit and we anonymously beamed with pride (while of course bragging to all our friends). The slogans were written in deep slang and roughly translate as: “Donkey for mayor” and “Whither the mayor?”

Dosta had great slogans. The local activists all dropped out because it was more of a vehicle for a few people to earn big salaries from international donors rather than a group that was really about change.

There is still Dosta logo graffiti all over the walls of Sarajevo. The same few people from the now-defunct Dosta movement are still earning great salaries from international donors, with other projects.

Mostar is currently in the grips of a constitutional crisis– the city didn’t even have local elections with the rest of the country this October.